


For Those With Grief

by chicagoartnerd



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:17:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3180071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagoartnerd/pseuds/chicagoartnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pain of loss isn't something they have time to feel while saving the world. And yet Varric and Lavellan carve out a little space to look after one another after a painful trip into the Fade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Those With Grief

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write fluff. It became this. I might be evil. As much as I want Varric and Hawke to be happy together I also love that Varric knows what happens to heroes and legends and there are rarely happy endings. No matter how much he wants to write one for Hawke or even himself.

Varric opened his eyes to see Hawke’s golden cat ones squinting at him from across the pillow. He let out a huff, blowing the bangs out of her face. She made a slightly disgusted face.

  
“You breath is worse than Spoons’ after he kills cave spiders! Why in the Maker’s name did I decide to put myself through this every morning?”

  
He laughed and pulled her in closer so he could shower her with light kisses up her throat to her jaw. She grumbled like she was being put upon but her hands told a different story, trailing a hot winding path down his chest. When they dipped below the waistband of his loose trousers he nipped at that soft spot behind her ear just so they could both gasp together.

  
His chuckle rumbled against the hollow of her throat as he kissed her there next.

  
“If not for the hygiene then maybe the exceedingly mouthy company? I can think of more annoying ways to be woken up.”

  
She pressed in closer to him as her hand ghosted down to lazily cup his balls. Hawke’s grin was positively twisted as she was about to speak. The sound of  multiple pairs of running footsteps stopped her. The door flew open and two small shapes darted in to jump of the end of their bed.

  
“Momma Momma! Jean says my name means moldy bronto butts in elvish! Aunty Lavellan was laughing so hard she couldn’t tell me whether or not it was true. Is it true?!”

  
His son made a betrayed face before shoving her almost hard enough to knock her off the bed.

  
“Shut up Myran! You’re always such a tattle-tale. Pappa makes up stories all the time why do you get mad when I do it?”

  
His daughter looked at her twin brother furiously. She would have her revenge. Both of them had too much of Hawke and himself in them not to.

Varric grinned as Hawke withdrew her hand from playing with him and he sighed.

  
“Like this.”

  
Cassie Hawke simply rolled her eyes and addressed both her children firmly.

  
“Now what did we have that conversation about just the other day? Was it about how everyone knows to always knock before opening a closed door except the two of you apparently?”

  
They both had the sense to look sheepish and Jean bravely spoke up.

  
“We’ll knock from now on but I was just following Myran! She was going to tell! I tried to stop her.”

  
Hawke pulled the sheets off the bed up with her to cover her nakedness as she ruffled Jean’s hair playfully before addressing them both.

  
“Jean if you want to tell tales like your father write them down first, one of us will ‘proofread’ them before you show your sister. Myran you’re named after your great grandmother Marian Hawke so don’t believe everything your precocious brother tells you.”

  
Both of them beamed at her with such love and awe that Varric felt his breath catch.  
They were perfect. This was perfect.

It couldn’t possibly be real.

As the copper haired heads of his children bobbed off the side of the bed and disappeared out their now open bedroom door he turned to Cassie. When she saw his look her face crumpled from a soft contented smile into a frown of worry.

  
“Varric?”

  
He felt so heavy now. It was time to leave.

Just like he had left the fantasy the Fade had woven of him when he smashed the Magrallen in Magister Titus’ castle. Except that tricky vision had been about him eloping with Bianca before the Merchant Guild had caught up with them, something that happened over fifteen years ago and yet still haunted him. Until Hawke.  
Unlike that previous Fade dream this one was much harder to destroy. He wanted it so much more.

  
“You died Hawke. At Adamant. You died for me. I... None of this is real.”

  
The laughter lines around her upturned eyes faded as she tried to reach out for him. But it was too late. He pulled away and her face looked almost as broken as his.

  
“You don’t have to leave. Just because this isn’t real doesn’t mean that the happiness we'll feel won’t be.”

  
He laughed but it wasn’t his normal deep timbred sound. It cracked at the end as he crawled sloppily out of bed away from her to stand close to the door.

  
“You’re right. That’s the damnest fucking part of this whole thing is that you’re right. But I’m me and that means that my happiness just isn’t worth this. I’m sorry.”

  
She didn’t call out to him or try to make him stay and to his great shame he was weak enough to look back at her before walking out through the doorway. The look on her face was pure Hawke; determination and solid killing iron. Even if she was crying.

 

* * *

 

 

When he exited the Fade he was lying on his back in the middle of some cursed elven ruins in the Exalted Plains. They had been fighting some demons at a Fade rift when something else big and glowing besides a Pride demon had come through and knocked them all down. Lavellan was already rising beside him and before he had a chance to wipe away the tears streaming down his face she saw them. And what he noticed reflected in her eyes made his heart clench.

It was commiseration.

She wordlessly rose and closed the rift that had knocked them all unconscious. Whatever had been there tempting them was sealed back in the Fade. Blackwall and Dorian came to a few heartbeats after them but the damage had already been done. He and the Inquisitor had both been offered something in the Fade that they could never have.

That night Varric followed her when she left the camp to climb a tree or something equally forest-y.

Shi’an was Dalish after all. For all of her breaking of boundaries and other people's preconceived notions she still made it clear to all of them that the forest called to her and that was where she felt most at home. So wherever they camped she would often leave to spend hours wandering, or climbing, or meditating or something else in the surrounding nature. He didn’t understand it personally as he was city dweller through and through. Maybe it was like sitting in his favorite chair at a tavern, his own personal throne, and telling a story to a court of gathered drunk and interested people. Both exhilarating and comforting. It was as familiar to her as that was to him.

They climbed a smooth rocky outcropping and sat down. Neither one of them said a word for a long time as the cold night air soaked into their bones and the stars in the heavens looked down at them as dispassionately as the Maker himself.

Shi’an was the first to speak.

  
“Her name was Talon. She was a Chasind woman. Her tribe and my clan traveled together for a time. She was my first lover. Talon died when bandits caught her hunting party on the edges of the wilds. I will always wonder if I had been there things would be different.”

  
The words slipped from his stupid mouth before he could stop them.

  
“Yeah like maybe you’d both be dead.”

  
She turned her solemn eyes towards him and nodded slowly.

“Yes. The truly terrible part is I used to wonder if that would have been better. It was the real reason the Keeper sent me to the Conclave. I died with Talon and was of little use to the clan as I was. I believe she hoped acting as the clan’s envoy would give me a new reason to live. Now we’ll never know. I am the last of my clan.”

  
That was not what he had been expecting.

  
“Oh. Well shit.”

  
For a beat he felt like a real ass. Oh sure his life had never been a picnic basket full of Antivan brandy cakes but here was someone with the entire weight of the world, not just that but the future of the world, on her shoulders. And here he had forgotten that Lavellan’s entire clan had been murdered by an angry mob in Wycome. They got the news right after they all returned from Adamant. It had been a rough few weeks since then.

Her suffering was a deep as his own it seemed. He thought about telling a story to comfort both of them. Instead he told her the truth.

  
“It was about Hawke. I woke up in bed with her and just when it’s getting to the good part our twin nug brats run into the room, jump on the bed calling us Mamma and Pappa and cause a heartbreakingly adorable commotion. And it made me so sodding happy. That was when I knew it wasn’t real.”

  
She made a slight hum of agreement and leaned back on her shoulders next to him, her head tilted up to the stars.

  
“Talon and I ran away together, like we used to always talk about doing. We were living in the forest off our skills and wits. She was always better than Andruil herself with a bow. My magic healed and sheltered us. We wanted for nothing and had each other. But always at the edge of the forest there were wolves. I heard them baying for me, for her, for first blood, and finally the sound of a kill. That was when I knew it wasn’t real.”

  
He whistled low.

  
“That sounds like some ominous and portentous elfy bullshit there my friend.”

  
She laughed and it was lighter than either of their previous words.

  
“No kidding. Varric?”

  
He turned his head down to face her where she was looking up at him from the smooth rock face and waited for her question.

“Do you think it’s worth it to keep trying?”

  
He didn’t need to ask what she meant. His answer was immediate.

“Always.”

  
He was a storyteller after all. That was the essence of what he was. If his tall tales couldn’t put a little hope out into the world and tell people that things would get better then what good was he? The same went for Lavellan. It wasn’t what she chose to be like he had but she too gave people hope. What was the use of either of them if they gave up?

She smiled knowingly at him before stretching to stand. Once upright she offered him a small hand up from the cold ground and he gladly took it.

  
“I didn’t get to speak with her as much as I had wished but one thing she did tell seemed awfully important.”

  
He raised his sandy eyebrows as she smiled down at him, her teeth blinking white in the darkness.

  
“Hawke said you were the most beautiful liar she had ever met but that was what made you so wonderful at loving people. I’m quite inclined to agree with her but I would also add that stories aren’t lies if everyone would rather believe in them than the truth. That’s when they become hope.”

  
His eyes went wide at that proclamation and even wider and she swooped down to kiss him quickly on the cheek.

  
“Goodnight Messere Tethras. May the Dread Wolf never find you in your dreams, even if dwarves don’t usually have them.”

  
She winked playfully as he watched her go stunned.

Of all the people he lost Hawke had left the biggest hole in him, surprisingly, even deeper than the one Bianca had carved out for herself.

But Lavellan was giving him the impression that all of the people he knew, and ones he had yet to meet, would make it worth it.

Shi’an was giving him hope. Just in a different sort of way than the rest of the world.

The grief would never truly leave either of them but they were both alive and moving forward whether they wanted to or not. Maybe it was time to start writing a  brand new story.

Seemed like more people than him needed to hear it.


End file.
